Jason bows his head. “Forgive me, sir,” he says, no trace of embarrassment in either his voice or posture. “I was sick this morning and couldn’t come to homeroom.”
Two girls in the front row put their heads together and whisper behind their hands, and an excited titter rises up from the rest of the class. The eyes of every female in the room—besides yours truly—glue to Jason like he’s their dream incarnate. It triggers my gag reflex.
So he’s famous. Get over it, people. If you talk to him for five minutes, you’ll see how annoying he is.
The teacher dismisses Jason’s apology with a wave.
A girl sneaks her cell phone out of her purse and snaps a shot, but our teacher’s attention zeroes in on her. He frowns.
“Cell phones away, please,” he snaps, and the girl shrinks in her seat. “I will remind everyone that it is against school policy to take any photos on school grounds, especially of our”—his eyes cut to Jason—“students who don’t wish for any attention. Failure to obey school rules will result in being expelled.”
My eyebrows shoot up, but the teacher doesn’t say anything else, and I’m left wondering if Jason somehow bribed the entire staff to keep the other students from squealing to the public that he’s hiding out here.
Jason shifts away from the door, and I realize then that he still hasn’t sat down. He scans the classroom, and my pulse kicks up when I realize the only available seats are the two up front and the one to my left.
He steps past the front row, and I know exactly where he’s headed.
This is not happening. The thing about telling someone off is that it feels great at the time, but regret inevitably follows. No matter how obnoxious he was to me, he didn’t deserve my telling him his band sucks.
I stare at my notebook and pink pencil, trying to keep my hair as a barricade between my face and his eyes as he sits. He says nothing to me, makes no sign of recognition, and my irritation flares. He can’t not know who I am, right? I’m, like, the only freaking American at this entire school, and I can guarantee I’m the only white hipster walking around.
No, he’s just ignoring me.
I quickly learn that this teacher, whose name I discover is Mr. Seo, is even duller than Mr. Yun, and I have to pay close attention to what he says, since his accent’s so thick.
“Turn your books to page five, please,” he says. “First, we will talk about the speech levels in the Korean language.”
I skim the page, then look ahead at later chapters, which are full of characters and symbols that look more like miniature pieces of art than letters. Even the English phonetics beside the Korean characters baffle my brain, letters squished together and broken up to form unintelligible sounds and syllables I can’t even guess how to pronounce.
I am in way over my head, and it’s only the first day.
“The first level is called Hasoseo-che,” he continues. “It was used when a person talked to a king or official, but we don’t use this anymore except in the Bible. Hapsyo-che is next, and it is called ‘formal polite.’”
He keeps talking, but he’s already lost me. I peer out the window and let my mind drift.
“Perform the exercise on page six with the partner beside you,” Mr. Seo says, cutting through my daydreams. “Read the scenario and decide which speech level you would use to speak to that person.”
Shoot. I should have been listening. I cut my eyes over to Jason, who shares my two-person table, and cringe. We have to talk. I can’t ignore him, can’t pretend he’s not ignoring me. Marvelous.
I swallow the guilt weighing heavily in my gut. “So … do you understand any of this?”
He stares down at the page and doesn’t answer.
“Kind of a dumb question,” I mutter. “You’re Korean. Why are you in this class, anyway?”
Other students around us chat about the exercise, but I read back over the instructions again. What am I doing in this class? I’m definitely going to need a tutor. This does not bode well for my GPA.
“Why are there so many different levels of formality?” I ask Jason, praying he’s feeling gracious. “I don’t get it.”
“It has to do with respect,” he says, shocking me. “You want to give respect to people who have authority over you or are older.”
“Okay, I get that, but seven levels?”
“It’s just part of the culture. And it’s not like we use all seven every day.” He still studies the textbook like it will reveal the cure for cancer or how to achieve world peace. “You’ll need to be more culturally intelligent if you want to live here.”
Culturally intelligent. Why didn’t he just say You’ll need to stop being an American elitist? That’s what he meant. I think.
“Why are you even in this class?” I ask again, fighting my instinct to call him on the insult. “Don’t you already speak Korean?”
He doesn’t deign to respond, and my irritation flares.
“I mean, if I were a famous rock star, I wouldn’t be in school at all,” I say, hoping my sarcasm is apparent. “I’m surprised you even have time for classes. I would have thought you’d be too busy answering fan letters. That’s what you were really doing this morning, right? You weren’t sick, you were checking online message boards, Googling yourself. Shouldn’t you have a private tutor that gives you all the right answers or something?”